Lutosławski Cello Concerto Nicolas Altstaedt, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, Dima Slobodeniouk 

Exactly;)

Just astounding piece of music. What an outrageous musical discovery it is for me. Unbridled genius and I do not say that lately. Few are the pieces that leave you hooked from start to finish, most seem to exhaust the themes and main ideas fairly quickly, or not utilize them in a way that is ultimately gripping. This piece however, and I listened to it very closely many times, is just a rollercoaster ride from start to finish with no dull moments. Every part has its own beautiful nuances and the dissonance is just utterly beautiful. It sounds like an anxiety attack, at times like a psychotic break even, and to me this is one my favorite sonatas and one of the most original (big emphasis on original) pieces of classical music ever written. I also love how it's trademark Lutoslawski and not yet another experimental composer - he has his own mannerisms. The only other sonata that gripped me in the same way is Kodaly's Cello Sonata which, while not as experimental perhaps, just oozes unbelievable amounts of musicality in every turn. Eastern Europe produced some of the most utterly astounding composers of our modern times, it never ceases to amaze me. Lutoslawski, Kodaly, Bartok, Ligeti, Penderecki, and the list goes on...

I like that description. It's pretty much how I felt listening to it for the first time. To me there was also a comical element, how the lone cello held its own against all of those cacophonous voices and just determinedly carried on. I also appreciated that the flutes were, at times, somewhat in sympathy with the cello. The concert with Miklós Perényi on Cello, Simon Rattle conducting, esp seems to play on that theme as Miklós seems to embody the 'everyman' holding his own. But it's only available on the Berliner Phil paid app.

Late 60s, Lutosławski at his best in my opinion❤

Instablaster

What were conclusions from a form and analysis perspective?

@@michaelrosa2015 Basically you can classify many motivic materials and see how and where they were spread throughout the entire piece.

@@user-ej2jm8lk7j What I find fascinating about this work is to consider how Lutoslowski heard it, that is, within his mind.

The reason the note is extended in different versions is because in the full score is says "12-15" which means to be played 12 to 15 beats, if you didn't know

😁🤭

Altstaedt plays a Giulio Cesare Gigli cello from Rome around 1760

@@alastairbissland8449 It is Nicolas Lupot 1821. Nicolas Altstaedt played on the Gigli from 2013-2018.

This concerto is a standard of the cello repertoire. Fantastic music.

It’s the notes, the contrasting sounds, so clear, so beautiful.

If it's "unlistenable", how do you know it's a great performance?

@@rljmachen Thanks for the comment. Nothing that I ever care to listen to again. Once was more than enough. I respect the effort of the orchestra members and their talent.

I don't quite think so, even as I don't usually like modern classical music. I have heard some much worse pieces. This piece has amazing variation in dynamic, rhythmic, melodic, and expressive qualities. There is a structure which I often find lacking in modern pieces. Lutoslawski is a genius, even I must admit that.

Because those times in Poland were hideous? Composition is sometimes more than the sum of sounds. Please consider that the piece involved the opposition, cello vs orchestra, individual person vs system (total). Lustosławski and Rostropovich worked behind the Iron Curtain, which had its implications. Please read an opinion of a music critic Oskar Łapeta: www.nfm.wroclaw.pl/images/Sezon_2022-2023/omowienia/20_01_23_Tristan_i_Izolda__www.pdf Google translation: "Witold Lutosławski's Cello Concerto was commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society and the Gulbekian Foundation, and the artist dedicated this composition to the outstanding cellist Mstislav Rostropowicz. This artist, valued for his phenomenal technique, told Lutosławski when writing the concerto: “Don't think about the cello. Cello - that's me. Write music." However, the result must have surprised him, as he found the concert difficult and demanding. Although Lutosławski was as far from illustrative and programmatic as possible in his work, the epic and dramatic nature of this work provoked numerous questions from Rostropowicz about the composer's intentions. When, in response, the cello suggested a conflict between the solo cello and the orchestral ensemble, the cellist immediately recognized it as a symbol of the individual's struggle against the oppressive communist regime. Rostropovich, then strongly defending the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who was repressed by the Soviet authorities, decided to treat this work as a political manifesto. The way of shaping the music helped him in this a narrative in which the thought spun by the solo instrument is interrupted in an extremely suggestive way by the sharp entrances of the orchestra"...

Hahahahaha. The painful world we live in.

i like it

Quit grandstanding beyond your means already.

I think a most challenging aspect of this work is to frame it in terms of a narrative. I read a comment where the individual regarded it as symbolic of oppression of people's and that had not at all occurred to me. Honestly I have not a clue as to what the work represents. Perhaps that is it's mystery...

​@@michaelrosa2015 rape. I'm pretty sure it's rape.